And To All a Good War!
by finest-kind
Summary: An incredibly pointless parody of "'Twas the Night Before Christmas". I was inspired by similar poems during an excessively boring bout with the flu over the holidays.


'Twas the night before Christmas when all through the MASH,

Not a creature was stirring, not even the corned-beef and hash we had last night for dinner

(We had to give it a tranquilizer when it wouldn't stop marching up and down the table.)

Our stockings were hung on our tent beams with care,

Regretting the odors which soon would be there

The surgeons were nestled all snug in their cots

While visions of nurses ran nude through their thoughts,

(Not to mention their dreams, retrospections, introspections, outro-spections, meditations, ruminations, deliberations, and concentrations.)

The men and the girls in their finest of greens,

Asleep while the land was blown to smithereens

'Til out in the compound arose such a clatter,

We sprang from our beds to see what was the matter

(Though "sluggishly dragged ourselves" is really the more appropriate verb choice after thirty-two hours of meatball  
surgery.)

Threw open our doors and ran out in the frost

Grinning and bearing the sleep we had lost

The moon was so bright, but less so than the lamp

That flooded its yellow across the whole camp

When what interesting troubles were brought to the light,

But a truck full of wounded, no reindeer in sight

The driver threw out his cigar with a flick,

And thus made apparent he wasn't St. Nick

(Though it may have been his corporal stripes that gave it away.)

More rapid than fire, the wounded, they came

And dear Colonel Potter started shouting by name:

"Now Charles, now B.J., Nurse Kellye on stand-by,

On Klinger, on Johnson, on Margaret, on Hawkeye!"

To pre-op and triage, to your post in O.R.,

I want no monkey business, no hardy-har-har!"

Like the bullets that flew o'er Korea that night,

We rushed into action and were soon out of sight

And into the madness of surg'ry we flew

With all of the wounded, our guts tied up, too

(The distinct advantage of our guts being tied was that at least ours were still on the inside.)

And then, in the O.R., I heard through the din

The shrapnel from soldiers being dropped in a tin

As I drew in my breath, and I turned to be sick,

I was faced by our Hawk and his casual shtick

He was dressed all in scrubs like the rest of us were,

Except for Max Klinger, who of course was in fur.

(The only girl I know whose leg hair matches his mink.)

He quipped and he quoted like a knave or a jack

As the rest of the staff was just waiting to crack

His eyes—how they glittered with promise of sin!—

This man who was known for molesting his gin

His over-worked mouth was drawn up in a smirk,

The loveable rascal tied up in his work

(The hand bone's connected to the arm bone, after all.)

So at Hawkeye's urging we stitched and we tried,

And, bless it, come morning, not one of them died

Soon the fighting, we learned, had come to a stop

So we hung up our scrubs and crawled out of post-op

Then off to the mess for our breakfast of trash

Some eggs that made gold of our corned-beef and hash

(Unlike the previous night's dinner, the eggs were violent enough to be shot on sight.)

Exhausted and weary, and without much pomp,

We held in our stomachs and went back to the Swamp

And oh, what a glorious sight of goodwill!

The gleaming and glittering beacon: the Still

The drinks all were poured without moment's delay

As mem'ries of meatballs all melted away

The bright Christmas morn was now fuzzy and dull

Predictions of wakefulness voided and null

As Charles and BJ and Hawkeye and John

Drank our weight in martinis this one Christmas dawn

(Or maybe we drank each other's weight in martinis. Or drank each other's martinis in wait.)

The Winchester fell as the gin gave its clout

And Beej was the second who wholly passed out

I smiled and watched without making a peep

As my liver cried out and I drifted to sleep

So Pierce was the last to give into the booze

As he wobbled, unsure, but unwilling to lose

I heard him exclaim, ere he fell to the floor:

"Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good war!"


End file.
